Evolution of complaints for driving without a license
Total annual data. Those of 2024 are until August
Sources in the Traffic Division of the Mossos d’Esquadra claim that part of this increase is caused by “higher police intervention”. They exemplify this by pointing out that the Traffic workforce has grown by 16%. They claim that all Mossos and local police officers, no matter which division they are from, have the “guideline” to always check if the driver’s license is in order when they stop someone. Everything is digitized, and all the data comes out just by entering the ID in an application. The same sources, however, do not point to any specific cause behind the increase. They claim that it is “individual motivations” and not a “global element” that explains the data. Currently, in Catalonia there are 236 people in prison for driving without a license and 72 minors treated for this crime.
A surprising fact is that most people who catch without a license have never had one. Of the 18,160 people reported in 2023, up to 9,540 had never set foot in a driving school (6,551 had lost their points and the remaining 2,000 had a court order preventing them from driving). The majority, therefore, are what Traffic sources call “irreducible”. They are people who “have not even considered having a license” and who usually live “on the edge of the law”. The same sources, however, rule out that there is “a clear pattern”. “It’s a diverse profile,” they add. There is a group of people, “bigger than we think”, who live outside these rules, they say. There is also a group of minors who take the motorcycle or the car when they do not have a license. A source exemplifies this with a recent case: a mother sent an email to the Mossos with a photo of her youngest son on top of a motorbike. In the letter, he explained that he always takes the motorcycle without a license and that he does not know how to do it.
To illustrate the irreducible, there is a slightly older anecdote, from 20 years ago. A police officer explains that he stopped a man who was driving with a female co-pilot. He was a middle-aged man, well dressed. “I don’t have a driver’s license,” was his reply. When the officer told him he couldn’t drive, he asked, “Oh no? I’ve been like this all my life.” In fact, he was dedicated to being commercial. Before giving up, he asked the Mossos to let him take the woman home, who had just met him, and who would return later. These people, according to police sources, lose their fear of driving without a license and end up doing it routinely. Traffic sources also regret the cases of drivers who lose points and do not even consider recovering them. The points, the sources reiterate, are a “reinsertion” system. “For something they can recover”, they add. The Mossos insist that driving without a license is a crime that can carry penalties of up to six months in prison.
A lot or a little?
One of the big questions is whether catching 50 drivers without a license every day is too much or too little. It is a lot compared to the data of a few years ago, but Traffic sources also make it clear that it is a small percentage of all drivers. “In Catalonia there are 13,000 kilometers of roads”, they point out. Another trigger for the increase is that the validation of the card is one of the fastest and easiest procedures to do. Therefore, many are practiced every day. In the same vein, the most common complaint on the roads is for not having the MOT up to date, something that the police also do very quickly.
Another surprising element of the data on complaints against people driving without a license is that they break the general rule of territorial distribution. In other words, most crimes tend to be committed in areas where more people live. This means that the metropolitan police areas (Barcelona, South and North) are the ones that accumulate the most offences. On the other hand, the region that accumulates the most crimes for driving without a license is Girona. The second is not Barcelona, but the North Metropolitan Region. If we talk about Barcelona city, almost the same offenses have been committed there as in the region of Tarragona or the Southern Metropolitana. According to police sources, this may happen because people in rural areas may think there are fewer police checks.
